“Did they…?” Lucas asked the question, but his words dropped off before he could finish the sentence. “Are you…?”
“I don’t think their Alpha will be siring any new pups anytime soon. And I definitely didn’t make any friends. But I’m fine.”
“My God,” Callum said.
“I don’t want to tell you your business, Callum, but I think your last goal should be expanding into our territory when you have a dissenting pack not one hour from your front door.” I leaned across the table and fixed him with a hard stare. “You know how bad a dissenting pack can make you look, don’t you?”
Callum didn’t appear too impressed with me right then. He turned to regard Lucas, as if to ask if my king had put me up to this, but I think Callum knew me well enough by now to understand that no one put me up to anything against my will. “Yes,” he said at last. “I do know.”
“So do we have your word that for the time being, until your feral problem has been dealt with, you won’t be trying to move into our territory?”
He sat back and once again spoke to Lucas. “Look at what you East Coast wolves do to my nice Southern girls? She’s cutthroat.”
Lucas shrugged. “Blame Canada.”
I smiled.
“She’s going to make one hell of a queen, Rain.”
“She will if you let me marry her.”
The Southern king leaned back in his chair and chuckled in a warm, smoky way. “Like I could stop you with her involved.”
And with that, we had what we’d come for. I let out a sigh of relief.
“In fact, why stop there?” Callum added, and the sigh got caught in my throat.
“I don’t—”
“Your sister is home now, and your brother is here too. Let’s go for broke. You two will proclaim your mate-hood here. Tomorrow night, during the full-moon ceremony.”
Shit.
Chapter Thirty
Alone in our little cabin, I was allowed to pace back and forth, for all the good it did me.
“What does he mean, proclaim our ma
te-hood? You already activated our mate bond.”
“It’s different.”
“Okay, fine. Explain it to me.”
Lucas was sitting on the couch, watching me pace. “There’s a ceremony all werewolf couples must participate in at the full moon. They declare their bond in front of the whole pack, share blood, and then—in the eyes of the wolves—they are married.”
“But we’re getting married in a week. For real.”
He shook his head. “That’s a human custom. This ceremony is the real marriage. We would have done it after our wedding at the next full-moon gathering. I wanted to tell you after our wedding in the city, to give you time to adjust to the idea.”
I sat down on the stone hearth and tried to run my fingers through my hair. I needed a shower. And blood. But more than anything I needed not to be forced into a full-moon ceremony. What would happen when I couldn’t change? How was I supposed to explain that to Callum and his pack? And what would it mean for Lucas?
“I can’t do this.”
“I don’t see what choice we have.”
“But I can’t shift, Lucas.”